Collaboratory in Critical Security Methods
The International Collaboratory on Critical Methods in Security Studies is an ESRC funded project (RES-810-21-0072)
Schouten (2010) Security as controversy: privatizing security inside global security assemblages
I presented this paper at the 2010 ISA conference. I think it ties into many of the collaboratory's questions in an exploratory fashion. Based on the case of the controversy arising over airport security at Amsterdam Airport after the terrorist attack Christmas 2009, I ask, how ANT and Foucaultian approaches could clarify how security comes into being not only as a 'social construct' across public and private actors, but also through material assemblages. Very much work in progress, comments welcome. It ties into the 'securing mobility' theme as well as method 2.
This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of how security gets produced by studying the way in which private security actors try to settle the controversy over what security is and how it is to be attained in the case of airport security at Amsterdam Airport. Whereas private security companies by law have neither more rights than normal citizens nor the right to decide upon
security policy, this paper shows how due to the involvement of many private actors a liberal rationality or governmentality constrains and governs attempts to feasibly settle any controversy with regards to airport security. Building upon insights from actor-network theory, it focuses particularly on how translations inside this assemblage render security as a technical, measurable, economic issue and politics as an irrational force to be rationalized, tamed and enrolled. Actor-network theory warrants a focus on how spokespersons perform security through translations of heterogeneous elements into stable assemblages. Through such a micro-sociology of security governance, it becomes apparent how security in effect gets privatized and security separated from politics by presenting politics as
ʻirrationalʼ and separated from ʻrealʼ security expertise. The work of Michel Foucault is used to elucidate how two distinct security rationalities compete within the Amsterdam airport security assemblage to settle the security controversy in their interest. These two rationalities are presented by interviewed spokespersons as distinct translations of the relation between security technologies, the private security workforce and the demands of clients and regulations. As such, this paper presents an in-depth case study of what Abrahamsen and Williams presented analytically in their 2009 paper as ʻglobal security assemblagesʼ. It furthermore expands upon Lippert & OʼConnorʼs 2003 analysis of airport security assemblages that focused on the private security workforce as one homogeneous element.